andrewducker

FT insists that I tell them my position & job responsibility if I want to read their stuff. I guess I will never find out about the menace of grammar schools.

I suggest you lie :->

I also got annoyed at being asked to register. I suspect they would be preaching to the converted if I did read it though - if I were dictator of Britain, one of the first things I'd do would be to abolish all non-comprehensive schools.

Here's the most salient image:


FT points are a measure of how kids do in exams:
We give pupils 8 points for an A* in any full GCSE down to 1 point for a G, and add up the scores they get in English, maths and their three best other subjects.

So what I think this is suggesting to me that if you are well off having grammar schools in your area makes no difference but if you are worse off it makes things worse for you. So a net loss.

Is that your understanding of the message of this chart?

That bottom scale is hideous - it looks like percentage deprivation (whatever that means) but indicates the higher number is richer not poorer! However, that mess aside, it looks to me like you have to be in the top 20 %(?) to see no effect of grammar schools on average grades and everyone worse off than that suffers.

I think I’m reading it slightly differently.

What I’m seeing is – for the top half of the depreviation scale grammar schools don’t appear to make any difference (difficult to tell exactly because the selective schools’ line bounces around quite a bit) but for the bottom half (I’m more confident about this) you do worse.

Yeah, given the uneven line for the selective counties, it's hard to see where to draw the line below which grammar schools lead to worse grades for poorer students. It's clearly at 40+ though as that is the first time the lines touch at all. And it's certainly not a case for a reasoning benefit even for rich students.

That would make more sense if I typed 'resounding benefit' as I intended too...

Yeah – definitely worse off below 40 (and probably further up the curve) (1) and not much help in the middle, maybe a little bit of help at the top (although I suspect that the very top lot are sending their kids to fee-paying schools anyway.

(1) Not sure what the scale is actually measuring, is it household income distribution?

The article just says "Household deprivation" - presumably the percentile of lack of deprivation in this case!

I strongly suspect you are correct. I am of course showing my bias by drawing conclusions anyway when it may well be that if they had put some sort of error bars on the two lines, there would be no statistically significant difference between the two. If I was reviewing a scientific paper I'd be less than impressed with that graph for a number of reasons. I didn't read the article either though so it may be they acknowledge the small sample size if nothing else.
And I did acknowledge both my bias and the fact I hadn't read it when I started this discussion :)

Yup. The Deprivation is on a household basis.

Looks like the only people it really helps are people in the top 10%.

Ah, this is a new-to-me way in which grammar schools suck. Can't say I'm especially shocked though...

(I went to one)

The first thing?

You wouldn’t, say, spin round and round and round in the big chair for a bit first or call someone just so you could say “Listen, I’ve got to go, I’m Director of Britain.”

1) Get big white fluffy cat.
2) Get big rotating chair.
3) Get wall of video feeds.
4) Sit in chair in front of video feeds, stroking cat.

I have a grey and white fairly fluffy cat already ;)

The video feeds are going to be of internet kittens aren't they?

Also: penguins.

Ah, of course. Penguins.

Ah but that would be so much more satisfying if I could do it with a big fat grin of satisfaction on my face and could use that phrase to put the phone down on the Headmaster of Eton for example!

Hi, we’re not closing you, we’re just re-designating you as a full syllabus 11-16 comprehensive with an attached sixth form. The additional 1000 students will be bused in from Slough. Sorry, got to go, I’m Director of Britain.

Just the thought of that is giving me a warm fuzzy glow :) If only there was a hope in hell anyone in Government in this country would ever do it!

It's a good thing the Boy and I aren't having kids, I have one hell of a chip on my shoulder about education in this country - I'd hate to be a teacher having to put up with me as a parent ;)

I went to a Technical High School (which, some time after I left, was re-designated as a Grammar school). There were probably not enough of these around to provide any sort of statistical analysis, but I notice from the latest Labour PPB that they seem to want to re-invent them.

I've copied/pasted an image further down.

BugMeNot.com has a working username and password for them.

That first article makes a very good point that I hadn't considered before. I wasn't much for the phrase anyway but that articulates the issue much more clearly than my vague and unexamined discomfort based on the fact that people are people the world over.

Yes, the idea that some problems don't exist for people outside the developed world ignores the realities over there.

I also don't like the idea of people putting down their own unhappiness, although I can see some people using it as a tool to keep their perspective.

Yes, it was your second point that had been more on my mind in response to the phrase when I had seen it previously.

Maybe if people used #selfcentredwhining instead of #firstworldproblems? :-)

Yeah, same acceptance that what you're talking about isn't _that_ important in the grand scheme of things, but without generalising about different sections of the world.

And, let's face it, if you can't whine on your own blog/FB/Twitter then where _can_ you whine?

In my case, I could press my face against your window and scream with incoherent middle class rage. If it wasn't cold out, anyway.

Actually, Everything/Nothing is also a good substitution

You can now only see public Facebook events if you're logged in to Facebook.

Good! If Facebook were to place all of itself behind a login barrier, it would be even better. I don't want any of my Facebook activity to be Googleable or Bingable, not even when I interact with stuff misguided people have left "Public".

If people want to spy on me, they damn well better have NSA-grade resources.

I'm familiar with the "everything on the internet is public" theory. I disagree with it.

I find it quite vexing - I want to be able to show certain things to people not on facebook should I so choose. Annoying to have that option cut off.

You're aware that this page is public, right?

I am. However, though my username is easily linked to my real name, LJ does not force people to use real names.

I know that given a good dataset, it's not hard to cross-correlate various bits of personal information (email, DoB, etc) in order to match aliases to people. The company I work for sells one or more heavy duty software packages that could do that. It's also not hard to collect a good dataset, or automate the collection of one.

However, that costs money. The threat profile for someone doing that does not particularly concern me.

I would categorize threats on a three-point scale:
1. Casual googling of my name
2. Stalkerish googling of my name
3. Spy agency background check

(1) would be an interviewer googling me in the 5 minutes before the interview. The only thing I want them to see in the first 10 results are professional successes. Moving personal stuff like Facebook off the google index is a great help, as I'm sure Facebook has far too much SEO googlejuice for its own good.

(2) would be an ex or potential date researching me. For example, my now wife found my livejournal rather easily as I had used the same username on the online dating site where we met. I'm not very concerned about this as I'm not aware of any active stalkers.

(3) would be a government deciding I'm a person of interest for some unknown reason. I'm not particularly concerned about this for myself, though I do worry about other people. There is value in legislated privacy preventing such research, and I think privacy is under-legislated.

The flu article missed out my favourite flu misconception which is the "'flu is a really, really serious disease, unless you're incredibly ill, it's a cold not flu".

http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/content/167/7/775.full

From which: "The frequency of symptomatic infection was 66.9% (95% confidence interval: 58.3, 74.5)" -- in other words, 33% of people with the flu had not a single symptom. (This is in studies where people had been deliberately infected.)

Of course 'flu can be serious, indeed fatal. It can also be so mild that you don't notice anything.

Similarly "It's not flu unless you have a fever" -- that paper shows < 50% of people who have flu have a fever.

Yes, the "£20 note test" often posited to decide whether it's a cold or flu (if you wouldn't go out to pick up a £20 note you'd left on your doorstep then it's flu - if you would it's just a cold) was comprehensively debunked during the recent swine flu outbreak. A lot of people who felt a bit poorly for a day or two, and would absolutely have got up to pick up a fiver, let alone twenty quid, tested positive for swine flu.

Heh... I've not heard of that test -- but yes, exactly this. Seems there's no reliable way to tell flu from "just cold" as flu may be incredibly mild.